5 steps to finding brandable domains you can sell for a profit

5 steps to finding brandable domains you can sell for a profit

Brandable domains are quite tricky because for the longest time, brandable domains were just made-up words, that was the growing rule of thumb for domain name sellers and buyers. For example, names like Squidoo or Yahoo got a lot of attention, the problem with such brandable names is the fact that a lot of them are hard to spell. Also, a lot of them are not very phonetic. Some words in the English language involve silent letters, and this can lead to all sorts of confusion.

As you can well imagine, when dealing with made-up names, you’re mostly just rolling the dice and hoping that somehow, someway, a domain investor would pick up your portfolio. It does happen, but it’s so erratic and random that it’s not a workable way of making consistent money online. Thankfully, there is a more natural 5-step process at finding brandable domain names you can sell for profit.

Follow the five steps below and increase your chances of making more money with your domain speculation business.

Step 1 – Pick a domain niche with lots of buyer activities. Go to websites like Flippa.com, or domain auction websites and look at the domains that have been selling quite a bit for the past three to six month. You should be able to see a pattern that certain types of domains that involve a specific subject matter, tend to sell more than other domains that are categorized differently.

Identify these niches, your objective for this step is to merely figure out hot-selling categories. Make sure you cross-reference this with the average price of each domain sale. If you did your homework correctly, you would be able to find hot selling niches that on average yield higher prices per domain sale. Compared to other niches, this can take quite a bit of time, but it’s definitely worth it.

Step 2 – Identify top selling “real world” names in your target niche. Now that you have identified hot-selling niches, find the top-selling names that are actually closed for a lot of money. This should not be all that difficult, because the ones that sell at the highest prices are very easy to spot.

Step 3 – Use online tools to make variations. There are quite many online tools that add words or make variations of domain names, so add the stem word for the real world domain names that have sold well. Use these tools to create variations of those names. Now, keep in mind that you should not pick names that are too long. You should not pick names that are very hard to spell. You should not pick names that are phonetically problematic. You should not pick names that are hard to memorize or remember. Also, you should not pick names that are made up of more than three words. Generally speaking, you should follow the rule of thumb that the shorter the domain name, the more attractive it is. Once you’ve made enough variations and you filter down your list, go on to step 4.

Step 4 – Use a bulk domain name detectors to find unregistered names. I personally love namesilo.com, because it has a bulk function. You can put all your proposed domain names into a text file and upload it to Namesilo, and it will batch process all 500 at once. It can support only 500 domain names at once, but this should be plenty.

After doing all that filtering, you should be left with a substantial number of domain names, maybe less than 100 or maybe over 50. You need to put yourself in the shoes of a potential buyer then and go through them again. Go back to the top-selling real-world names in your target niche and ask yourself, what kind of thinking process the buyers of these domain names operate with? Assume that you’re one of them and ask yourself whether you would be interested in picking up any of the names that you have left over on your list. Pick out the very best, maybe 20, and register them on Namesilo.com or other domain name registrar.

Step 5 – Sell on Flippa.com using a bid format. Since you just bought these domain names, your investment is less than $10 plus the listing fee flippa charges. In your mind, allow yourself to be content with winning bids over $50 or $100. Set it up for a bid format starting at $1.

If you picked the right domain names, once you notice that it has passed your threshold of let’s say $50 or $100, try doubling it and setting it as the buy it now price. For example, if your limit is $100 and the last bid is up to $125, try to double that and set $250 as your buy it now price. Now, keep in mind that you probably won’t be able to sell all your domain names, however, if you followed the 5 steps above and there’s an up bidding activity, you will not only be able to recoup your investment, but you stand a good chance of making quite a significant profit.

The key here is step number 4, you have to filter your list based on quality, and unfortunately, the only way to get good at this is to do it repeatedly. The more you do this, the better you will be at making judgment calls as to which domains to buy and sell and which ones to discard or disregard. It takes quite a bit of experience to get the ‘gut instinct’ needed to discard the wrong domains. The usual tendency for most newbies is to hang on to as many domains as possible. This is a mistake. You end up diluting whatever profits you manage to make off your winners. Learn to let go. Sure, from time to time you let go of winners, but this is better than sabotaging yourself with a vast raft of domains that won’t sell.